Nov 4, 2005

Crisis Needlefelting

Hopefully, this will be my last posting with the word "crisis" in the title! Mom is doing better and I'm trying to regroup with more time for myself.

In addition to the easy-pattern knitting I was doing while at Mom's, I would come home and be so stressed I couldn't do much more than sit and poke a needlefelting needle into pretty hand-dyed wool.

The first thing I did was take this oddly-shaped vessel (needlefelted, then wet felted) I did awhile back and add needlefelted spirals to it.

Then I made a bunch of those spirals:

And then I started needlefelting over these smooth black river rocks:

Needlefelting over rocks requires even more attention than regular needlefelting which requires a lot so you don't do serious puncture-wound damage to your hands. You have work kind of sideways and much more slowly. It was actually a very nice meditative exercise.

I then wet felted the wrapped rocks, so that the wool snugged up tightly.

I also made a two small vessels, both of which I finished by wet-felting after forming them with the needles.

This one is very tiny, about 2.5 inches high, and quite thin. It was more of an experiment in the technique and I'd make future vessels like this a bit thicker. But I really am pleased with how this came out, the arrangement of color and line resonate with my being and it is much closer to the vision I have of the sort of art I want to make.

And finally, here are the bags I knitted from the Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton Noro Revisited book.The first is in Kureyon and the second is in Cherry Tree Hill Potluck - bulky, I think. I didn't like the part where the sewing comes together and so I needlefelted one of those spirals over the spot on both sides. I do like the way they turned out. I'm thinking of doing another and felting the whole thing....

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About Me

Professor's wife, mother of four, zannma to two. Grew up in Coral Gables, Florida, transplanted to Indiana at age 40, where I saw my first snow and learned to love wool. We homeschooled three of the kids, I helped to create a used bookshop ( Wabash River Books 1996-2005)and became an online bookseller. I started this blog in 2005 to share my mid-life artwork (primarily fiber), poetry and creative explorations. On March 18, 2006 my 20 year-old son Patrick died...and my world irrevocably changed.
I own 64 years now. Life is very mysterious, magickal, beautiful and sweet and sad.